


Paralyzed

by DangerousCommieSubversive



Category: Young Avengers
Genre: Awkwardness, First Kiss, M/M, Paralysis, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 01:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangerousCommieSubversive/pseuds/DangerousCommieSubversive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nate gets hit by a stray lightning bolt during team practice, leaving him temporarily paralyzed...and, awkwardly enough, lying on top of Eli.</p><p>Based on <a href="http://maelikki.tumblr.com/post/52175995233/billy-zapped-a-bit-too-hard-that-time-and-nate-was">this piece of art</a> by <a href="http://maelikki.tumblr.com">Maelikki</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paralyzed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maelikki](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Maelikki), [Khirsah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khirsah/gifts).



> Maelikki drew this wonderfully inspiring picture, and Khirsah is my fanfictional hero and said she shipped it. So.
> 
> Here is this story. I wrote it for them.

“Come on, Asgardian, _focus._ You _know_ you can do this.”

Billy screwed up his face, sweat rolling down his forehead. “Seriously, can we ditch the codenames in practice? I'm having enough trouble concentrating as it is.”

“All right, then. _Billy._ _Focus._ All you're doing is lightning right now, that shouldn't be too tough. Just aim at the dummy.” Nate rolled his neck, his helmet retracting back into his armor, and sighed. They'd been at this for _three hours,_ and seriously, how hard could it be? It was just _magic,_ not complicated engineering; all Billy had to do was _think_ about it.

Granted, Nate was having sort of a problem too, because being the training guy meant that _he_ was thinking about _Billy,_ and Billy's floppy hair and nice legs and _stupidly_ adorable scrunched-up I'm-concentrating face. None of these thoughts were at _all_ useful or helpful to the team, of course, because inevitably then he'd run into the problem of Teddy Altman, team bruiser, shapeshifter, and infuriatingly perfect boyfriend extraordinaire.

His future was shit.

The guy he liked was dating someone awfully, terribly, world-endingly perfect.

He—

“Hey, guys, I'm heading home, I'll see you tomorrow—”

_Zzrt! Brzz!_

_Thump._

He'd just been hit by lightning and now he couldn't move.

“Nate, man, the hell was that?”

And he'd landed on Eli. _Fuck._

“Hey, Nate, look at... _oh._ Sorry, Nate!” Billy blinked at them and turned a bit pink. “And, uh, sorry to interrupt. I'll be...zapping over here, then, don't mind me.” He hurried off to the other side of the room, where there was another practice dummy set up a much safer distance away.

Nate tried to move. He couldn't. Not only had most of his muscles seized, his suit had _also_ locked up. The paralysis he could live with, maybe, but the locked suit meant it wouldn't respond to any voice commands and he'd need someone to use the manual release catches to extract him. And _then,_ of course, a systems reboot and a tune-up would be in order, just to make sure Billy hadn't actually _broken_ anything.

He flicked his eyes over to Eli and frowned—at least he could still move his mouth and breathe and things like that. “Eli?”

Eli was pinned to the ground beneath him, and had a _weird_ look on his face. “You...”

Nate could feel his face flushing. “Look, one word about this and _you're_ doing zapping practice with Asgardian next time.”

“Lips zipped.” Eli worked an arm free. “D—I—damn, Nate, your suit is _heavy._ How do you _move_ in this thing?”

“Well, _normally_ it moves _with_ me.”

Across the room, the other two members of the team had their heads together, and from their pile on the floor Nate and Eli could hear an almost stage-whispered, “Oh my god, _Teddy!_ ” Some muffled whispering, and then, “They're so _cute!_ ”

Eli flapped his free hand at them. “Yeah, you two can just...uh...practice is over. Iron Lad and I have this all under control. Go home.”

Teddy frowned. “Are you sure you guys don't need help?”

“No. No, we're fine. Go home, I thought you said your mom was doing pad Thai tonight.”

“Right, she _is._ ” Teddy looked down at Billy. “Wanna come over for dinner?”

Billy shrugged. “Sure, if your mom won't mind.”

“She won't, she loves you. Let's get going. That is, if you two are really all right.”

Nate sighed. “Yes! Yes, we're fine! Go have pad Thai with Mrs. Altman.”

The other two took a frustratingly long time to change, collect their things, and head out. Or at least, it _seemed_ like a long time; according to the clock on the wall it had really only been five minutes. He'd been zapped _ten_ minutes ago total, and he _still_ couldn't move. How long was this going to last?

Once they'd cleared out, he huffed irritably and said, “Good thinking, Eli. This is awkward enough without them hanging around _looking_ at us.”

Eli—swallowed hard, Nate could _hear_ him swallowing, and said, “Yeah. Pain in my ass. You're heavy as _shit,_ man, my leg's going to go to sleep. How do we fix this?”

“Not a clue right now. I actually can't move, he froze me up completely. I mean, I'm going to need some help with my suit, but that can't really happen until I can move my arms.”

“Right, so...what? We just _stay_ like this?”

“I guess so. For as long as it takes for me to start moving again.”

“Shit, Nate, I have _homework_ to do. My grandma's going to _kill_ me.” Eli worked his other arm free and managed to grab his backpack from where it had fallen. “Hope you like _Macbeth._ ”

“Actually, I always preferred _King Lear._ ”

“Tough shit, future boy, I need to have Act Three of _Macbeth_ read by tomorrow morning and I'm only halfway done, so that's what we're doing.” Eli extracted a battered Folger Library edition of _Macbeth_ from his backpack, hesitated for a moment, and then wrapped his arms around Nate and rested the book on his shoulder.

By the time Lady Macbeth was shooing her dinner guests out of the presence of their uninvited ghost—“I saw a production of this once where they put Banquo's actor in a military-surplus camouflage suit that made him transparent, it was fascinating.”—Nate had regained some feeling in his arms, to the extent that he could twitch his fingers and toes a bit. That was promising, so he kept at it, until by the time they'd finished the banquet scene he said, with some confidence, “I should be able to roll off you now.”

“Yeah?” Eli put his book away. “Go for it, then, my leg's _definitely_ asleep. You roll, I'll try to shove you or something.”

“All right, then. Count of three. One...two... _three!_ ”

There was a mighty heave, and then he rolled off of Eli and landed on the floor with a _clang._

“Ow.”

“You ok, man?”

“Other than landing on my nose, yeah, I'm ok. Here, I need more help, roll me over.”

“Gimme a second.” Eli was massaging his leg, wincing as the blood flow returned. Even when he _did_ move, he winced a bit, and it took a few more minutes of determined shoving to get Nate rolled over onto his back. “Ok, what am I helping you with now?”

“I. Ah.” The reality of the situation suddenly hit Nate _very_ hard, and he went bright red. “I need you to take my suit off. It's completely locked, I can't do it myself.”

This...also seemed to be a sticking point for Eli, whose eyes had gone wide. “You need me to _what?_ ”

“I need you to. To take my suit off. Via the manual release catches. There's, um, we can start with the gloves, the catch there is on the back of my wrist.”

“Uh.” Eli shook his head hard. “Yeah, ok. Sorry, headrush, we were stuck on the floor like that too long. So the gloves! The gloves, you said. Yeah, let's deal with that.”

Eli managed to get his gloves off without making eye contact. Then came lower arm pieces, then upper arms, then the chest plate. Nate was just glad he'd _worn_ something under the suit today; if he was in a hurry sometimes he just suited up over his underwear. This time at least he had a t-shirt on, although he was becoming suddenly, _perilously_ aware of the fact that he hadn't put on any pants.

The pelvic guard came off, and Eli didn't _recoil,_ but he did sort of _freeze._ “Nate, man? You're kind of, uh...”

Nate gritted his teeth. “It's an effect of the electrical shock. Please ignore it.”

“Starting to feel like I oughtta buy you dinner.”

“ _Please_ ignore it.” He managed to prop himself up on his elbows, muscles still twitching as the life came back to them. “We're _almost_ done, seriously, I promise, I have a pair of pants over in the corner and I can get dressed and we don't _ever_ have to talk about this again.”

Eli nodded, mouth shut tight, and started undoing the catches for the leg pieces, and why hadn't Nate noticed before that he had very nice hands? And...and a well-shaped head, which sounded like an odd thing to pay attention to, but it really wasn't when the person in question kept it shaved. Good eyes, too, Eli had _very_ nice eyes, he was really a very attractive man and Nate sort of wondered why he didn't have a girlfriend. Because. Eli liked girls, right?

So.

That settled—

One boot came off with a pop, and then the other, and then Eli got to his feet and held out a hand to Nate. “Come on, man, let's go...let's go get you those pants.”

Nate lifted a shaky hand and grabbed Eli's forearm, and the other boy wrapped an arm around his shoulders for support. They took a step.

Of course, the problem with taking steps is generally that you have to know what to do with your feet, and knowing what to do with your feet is somewhat hindered by being surrounded with discarded pieces of armor. _Especially_ when your leg muscles are still half-paralyzed. So his foot slid out from under him and he fell down again, and this time Eli landed on _top_ of him.

At least this time it was Nate's turn to say, “Shit, you're heavy.”

“Yeah, sorry.” Eli braced himself—with his arms on _either side_ of Nate, which didn't start giving Nate a mental breakdown or anything. “I'm just. I'm. Uh.”

Their faces were very close together. In fact, Nate could feel a puff of breath with every word Eli said, and was fairly sure that Eli was feeling something similar when he said, “We should get up.”

“Yeah. Getting up. Definitely the plan.” Eli wasn't moving. “I just, gimme a sec, I'm just gonna...”

Eli's mouth brushed his, very softly, and Nate gaped for a moment and then said, “What, _really?_ ”

“...yeah, sorry, I'm gonna go home now, got all this _homework_ to do—”

“Eli, if you leave me here when I'm still half-paralyzed I'm kicking you off the team.” Nate paused. “I didn't say I didn't _like_ it, you just. Surprised me.”

“Yeah, well.” Eli's eyes flicked to one side. “I'm full of surprises. Got all kinds of secrets.”

After a moment he got up, and helped Nate back up, and they managed to make it to the corner where Nate's clothes were without further mishap. Although the fact that Nate needed some assistance with getting dressed didn't help the tension at all.

When he'd finally managed to make himself vaguely decent for public consumption, Nate stretched luxuriously and said, “So. You gotta go home now?”

Eli shrugged. “Grandma knows I'll be out late tonight.” Beat. “Wanna go get dinner with me?”

Nate grinned. “Sure. I mean, you _did_ already take my clothes off once this evening, seems only fair I should get pizza out of it.”

“Asshole.”

“Jerk.”

The fact that they held hands on the way out the door was something that neither of them commented on.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, please let me know!


End file.
